This is a multi-part update! Click through those little number boxes just below the image to see them all.

Fan Artist Danny says:

Since my tendency is to build ships and not people, I wanted to do
some pieces that actually featured The Galaxion.  I tried to be
reasonably faithful to your artwork in the comic, but I did run into
the limitations of my skill.  As much as I am a fan of smooth,
circle-derived spiral shapes, I can’t pull them off too well when I
have to build them manually.  Still, it was rather enjoyable to build
a spacecraft that looks substantially different from all the other
designs out there currently.

When Danny first sent me these, I was so amazed! I know a lot of people work with various 3D builders, but they’re still a bit of foreign realm to me, so I’m impressed by it all. Perhaps seeing the characters rendered this way would creep me out, but I love looking at the ship! Beautiful. Thank you so much!

This is a multi-part update! Click through those little number boxes just below the image to see them all. Fan Artist Danny says:

Since my tendency is to build ships and not people, I wanted to do some pieces that actually featured The Galaxion.  I tried to be reasonably faithful to your artwork in the comic, but I did run into the limitations of my skill.  As much as I am a fan of smooth, circle-derived spiral shapes, I can’t pull them off too well when I have to build them manually.  Still, it was rather enjoyable to build a spacecraft that looks substantially different from all the other designs out there currently.

When Danny first sent me these, I was so amazed! I know a lot of people work with various 3D builders, but they’re still a bit of foreign realm to me, so I’m impressed by it all. Perhaps seeing the characters rendered this way would creep me out, but I love looking at the ship! Beautiful. Thank you so much! Please check out more of Danny’s work.

Hey, folks! As some of you have pointed out, today is Aria Schafer’s birthday. Everybody sing! In honor of her special day, I’m taking this opportunity to announce the new edition of GALAXION Book 1: The Jump! Because look, there she is on the cover, in colour and everything. I don’t actually have the book in my hands yet, but I expect it to arrive from the printer very soon. Can’t wait can’t wait can’t wait!! For those of you who may already own a copy of the first edition and are wondering if you’re going to need to buy this one too… well, obviously the answer to that is “yes, buy lots and lots”, but just so you know, the content is exactly the same (except for some minor fixes and cleanup). But this one is offset print, which means the art will look sharper. And hey, pretty new cover! We’ll be selling them at upcoming conventions (Penguicon! TCAF! Toronto Comicon! Kids Read Comics! Baltimore Comic Con!), but if you aren’t able to get to any of those, we’ll be setting up to sell through the website very soon.

Happy Birthday, Aria! Be sure to tune in tomorrow for the regular Tuesday update.

Happy New Year, everyone! It’s a new year, a new decade, and all kinds of things to look forward to! But I thought I might spend some time looking back, at things that might have been. The Galaxion that never was. Or, I suppose, one of many Galaxions that never were. Somewhere out there in all the parallel worlds, all the different versions of Galaxion I started and dropped over the years actually got picked up and run with. And isn’t that a very appropriate (if somewhat startling to me personally) view of a science fiction story. This particular version that I present today is the first two chapters of a Galaxion novel.

You can download and read the pdf file. (It’s not very long, it clocks in at only 20 pages.)

Some of you may recall that I made an earlier version of Galaxion throughout the ’90s, and then stopped making comics altogether for six years before finally relaunching it as a webcomic. Well, there was a period of time around 2003 when I fiddled around with remaking Galaxion as a novel. For me, this was returning to my roots– my original plan, back when I was a young teen, was to become a novelist. Somewhere along the way I got diverted into comics and have never looked back… that is, except for this one time. In 2003 I was at loose ends, with my son old enough for me to feel like I could finally get back to normal. I was starting to itch to get back to being creative again, but I didn’t quite know what to do. At the time, going back to making comics (I hadn’t yet learned much about webcomics, I was still thinking in “floppy” terms) seemed like a bigger effort than I was ready to handle. But I figured I could grab enough time in a day to sit down and write, so I started forming in my brain the framework for a novel.

What’s particularly interesting about this era of Galaxion is, this is when the webcomic relaunch really began. I spent a lot of time thinking about my old comic and all the things I wanted to change or improve, and worked it in. Aria’s background as a colonist began to evolve, and from there sprang a whole host of new ideas.

I got sidetracked from all this again at the end of 2003 when my daughter was born, and by the time I was ready to get back to work I realized that although the novel had been fun, it was the comic experience that I really missed. I used all my notes from the work I’d done on the novel, tweaked it a final time, and began producing the webcomic in 2006.

I still wonder what might have happened if I kept on with the novel instead on going back to the comic. There’s stuff in it I like, and stuff I don’t. The first chapter certainly resembles the webcomic version of Fusella’s storming the Galaxion in Chapter One that it would later become, but the second chapter– enjoyable though it was to write– never made the cut for the webcomic.

I have many Roads Not Traveled in my years of doing Galaxion, ideas not used and character concepts put aside in favour of others. This is one of them. Enjoy! And we’ll see you again on Tuesday, Jan 5th, as we continue down the Road Chosen, and launch into Chapter Five!

(The illustration, by the way, has no particular association with the novel. It’s just another version of the “characters by the big round window” that I like doing so much.)

[Posted 1 April, 2012]

Happy April 1st!

Yes, I know. It’s the biggest cliché in the narrative world, so overdone that it barely qualifies as a gag. But it just flowed so beautifully out of the previous page I couldn’t resist.

See you Tuesday!

Galaxion has been on hold for the summer, and in its place we’ve been running Real Magic, drawn by me and written by my husband, David Tallan. This is the final installment– I hope you’ve enjoyed our little story! If you want to, you can start with the first page.

I know I promised Galaxion would return to normal starting Sept 1st, but as it turns out I’m going to need one more week off to get back to– I hope– normal. But fear not, I’ve still got some fun Galaxion content for you for next Tuesday!  It will be, in fact, the only full-colour Galaxion page I’ve ever done. How cool is that?

Also, one final reminder for those of you in and around the Toronto area this weekend– I will be at FanExpo, which runs Aug 28-30 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. You can find me in the Small Press Alley!

David here: This brings us to the end of my story, the only comic writing I’ve done (so far). I hope you enjoyed it. As you can see, Eddie was right on the mark. When I wrote it, I left the door open for further Thomas and Gavin stories, which may emerge at some future date. Also, well into the future when Galaxion is over and done with, we’ve talked about collaborating on Robin Hood. I think that if you go back to the roots of the Robin Hood story (the laws stripping away access to a common resource that was important and taken for granted by everyday folk, ordinary people fighting back against representatives of powerful institutions that were keeping them down) there are themes that may resonate with people today. All mixed, of course, with a certain amount of comedy. Ever since I read T.H. White’s Once and Future King, I’ve dreamed of doing for Robin Hood what he did for Arthur (I don’t set my sights high, not me!). I’ve got a lot of time to prepare, so I’m immersing myself in the literature. Maybe you’ll see that some day.

Galaxion is on hold for the summer! In its place we present “Real Magic,” drawn by me and written by my husband, David Tallan. Read it from the beginning! This story will run for six weeks, every Tuesday as usual. If you’d like to read some of the regular Galaxion story, you can start at the beginning, or why not try one of the completed short stories? Look for new pages of Galaxion to return September 1st!

I’m sure the, er, strange distortion in the second panel is the result of the spell Thomas is casting. Yeaaaah. That’s the ticket.

Do any of you gentle readers out there happen to be web designers? I am looking for someone to help me upgrade my current galaxioncomics.com site into something… prettier. Unfortunately neither David nor I have the skills to make this happen, so I’m throwing out a help wanted ad! Note, though, that what I need is someone able to actually design a site, and not just implement some ideas that I’ve already got. ‘Cause I don’t really got any. If I knew what would look good, I’d have an easier time with all this! Well, I have a list of features I’d like to have, I guess. So, I’m looking for someone with ideas for what would be both appropriate and complementary to the Galaxion comic. There will be compensation for this job– either a flat fee, original art (is there a comic page you fancy?), or some combination of the two. Interested? Drop me an email!

David here again: There’s not so much to say about this page. For his first attempt at spellcasting, Thomas used herb magic. For his second, he is using candle magic. If you look closely at the fourth panel you will see the spell is having some effect. So did the first spell. However, as they are attempting to counter spells that aren’t present, the effect is fairly subtle. (Okay, not apparent to anyone but me.) In the last panel, we can see Enki returning from his errand. Remember him?

Galaxion is on hold for the summer! In its place we present “Real Magic,” drawn by me and written by my husband, David Tallan. Read it from the beginning! This story will run for six weeks, every Tuesday as usual. If you’d like to read some of the regular Galaxion story, you can start at the beginning, or why not try one of the completed short stories? Look for new pages of Galaxion to return September 1st!

I should mention that all of the calligraphy that appears on this page was done by David. He’s much better at fancy medieval letters than I am.

Also, I will be at FanExpo here in Toronto, August 28-30! I opted to be in the Small Press area this year, so I guess for that reason I’m not listed on their website. But I will be there!! I’ll have the books for sale, along with buttons, sticky notes (I love the sticky notes), and original pages. Woo!

David here with a word about the herbs called for in the spell. In general, I was looking for herbs that medieval folk thought might be good for the eyes. I suspect I went to my handy Herbs for the Mediaeval Household: for cooking, healing and divers uses by Margaret B. Freeman (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1943). I know that’s where I went to look them up now.

There I find that Agrimony was used for “inflammation of the eyes”; Celandine “is good for sore eyes” and Fragaria Vesca (also known as Wild Strawberry) is “good for bleared eyes. Also, it is good to destroy the web in a man’s eyes.”

Clearly, these would all be excellent candidates for Thomas to work with. However, the book has nothing to say about gilly flowers (often identified with carnations or other flowers that smell like cloves). I’m sure I had a similar source and similar reasons. If anyone can track down a citation connecting gilly flowers to the healing of eyes…